I'm looking to upgrade my video card. I'd like to run Battlefield 3 at 1680x1050 smoothly on the lower settings. I'm also hoping to run Crysis 3, Black Ops 2, and some other future games on lower settings (though I know this will be less likely as time passes ).

I currently have a Galaxy 8800 GT PCIe 2.0 video card. I've got an old Asrock 939Dual-SATA2 mainboard with a 3800+ CPU. The board has a PCIe 1.0a slot, which currently hosts the 8800 GT without issue.

I was thinking of upgrading to either a Radeon 7770 (PCIe 3.0), Radeon 6850 (PCIe 2.1), or Geforce FX 560se. I'd like the Radeon 7770 in particular, since it only has an 85 watt TDP. I know the PCIe standard is supposed to be backward compatible, but I'm still worried about the newer cards working with my board. Has anyone out there successfully run one of the above cards, or a close family member (7850, 6870, 560 ti etc ) in the Asrock 939Dual-SATA2 board?

I've got a Corsair 450 watt power supply, which has 2 PCIe power connectors (I've read its internals are used for 500 watt power supplies from other manufacturers).

I know I'm more CPU bottle necked at this point, but I don't have the money for a full CPU/board/memory upgrade right now.

The system hosts 2 pci usb controller cards, a pci Soundblaster Audigy 2 soundcard, and four hard drives, two SATA and 2 IDE. One of the SATA drives is currently working intermittently since the system experienced a brown out; with all drives enabled, the system will soon hang, though I can use the system fine with the problem drive disabled, and boot into the problem drive with the others disabled. I don't know if the brownout fried one of my SATA controllers, something else on the board, the drive itself, or my power supply. This is an additional concern with upgrading the video card, as I'm afraid putting a card with two high of a power requirement into the system may break the power supply or fry something else

His cpu isn't that outdated and should give acceptable performance, provided it's overclocked. There isn't any reason to not upgrade the video card first either, since this isn't an old AGP board that you can't use the card once you upgrade the board. I don't see any downside to upgrading the card at all. The biggest problem here is that the cards listed are possibly too slow even for a fast cpu. The PCI-E slot shouldn't be a problem. I'd recommend a 7850 or 570 for BF3. You can get some of nvidia's older dx11 cards at a decent price if memory isn't an issue.

No one but Asrock ever made anything close to this board in that regard, and I am still rocking my Asrock 939Dual SATAII with an AMD 5000+ BE @ 3.1 and a 7950gx2 card. I have faster cards to pop into it (8800GTS, GT450, GTX260) but the uniqueness of the Asrock board itself makes me want to pair it with the also unique 7950gx2.

You are definitely going to be stretching it as far as the PSU goes, as any faster gamer card will demand more than your PSU will safely supply. I have a 500w PSU with 32a on the +12 rail and that's the bare minimum I'd want to run on my setup.

l33t-g4m3r wrote:His cpu isn't that outdated and should give acceptable performance, provided it's overclocked. There isn't any reason to not upgrade the video card first either, since this isn't an old AGP board that you can't use the card once you upgrade the board. I don't see any downside to upgrading the card at all. The biggest problem here is that the cards listed are possibly too slow even for a fast cpu. The PCI-E slot shouldn't be a problem. I'd recommend a 7850 or 570 for BF3. You can get some of nvidia's older dx11 cards at a decent price if memory isn't an issue.

Isn't the 3800+ a single core? If it is is completed outdated to a game like bf3 as it can't run in one core

I agree that the CPU will defo hold you back, I stuck a AMD 5770, in my old S939 with a overclocked opteron 175, when I upgraded to a Phenom X4 nd new Mbo d ram my graphics performance more than doubled with the same card, 939's are a bit too long in the tooth IMO.

l33t-g4m3r wrote:His cpu isn't that outdated and should give acceptable performance, provided it's overclocked. There isn't any reason to not upgrade the video card first either, since this isn't an old AGP board that you can't use the card once you upgrade the board. I don't see any downside to upgrading the card at all. The biggest problem here is that the cards listed are possibly too slow even for a fast cpu. The PCI-E slot shouldn't be a problem. I'd recommend a 7850 or 570 for BF3. You can get some of nvidia's older dx11 cards at a decent price if memory isn't an issue.

Gotta disagree. That single-core cpu will be absolutely crippling on any game from the last 2 years. Maybe even three. Your GPU is actually a better performer than your cpu at this point. $200 for a Z67 mobo and a Core i3, while not a flashy upgrade, would be greatly beneficial. Core i5 if you can swing the money.

I forgot to mention that I had a 3800+ [B]X2[B] dual core Winchester Athlon. I know that doesn't make much of a difference in speed. If I were able to get a 2.8 GHz [url="http://www.ebay.ca/itm/AMD-Opteron-154-Server-CPU-Socket-939-pin-2-8Ghz-1MB-OSA154DAA5BN-OSA154BNBOX-/140753837084?pt=CPUs&hash=item20c5951c1c"]Opteron[/url] or [url="http://www.ebay.ca/itm/AMD-ATHLON-64-FX-57-ADAFX57DAA5BN-SOCKET-939-2800MHz-1M-/230833028107?pt=CPUs&hash=item35beb87c0b"]FX57[/url], would I still be CPU bound with the 8800 gt? If I chose to upgrade later, would any of the cards I mentioned earlier work with the current board? I know they'd be overkill, but I could always pull them to another machine when I upgrade eventually.

I agree the CPU would make the most sense for the upgrade, but I've never replaced a CPU before, and I'm fearful that I may destroy my only gaming PC in the process if I mess it up

No one but Asrock ever made anything close to this board in that regard, and I am still rocking my Asrock 939Dual SATAII with an AMD 5000+ BE @ 3.1 and a 7950gx2 card. I have faster cards to pop into it (8800GTS, GT450, GTX260) but the uniqueness of the Asrock board itself makes me want to pair it with the also unique 7950gx2.

You are definitely going to be stretching it as far as the PSU goes, as any faster gamer card will demand more than your PSU will safely supply. I have a 500w PSU with 32a on the +12 rail and that's the bare minimum I'd want to run on my setup.

Thanks for the advice. Part of what has me leaning to a 7770 was the 85 watt TDP; the 8800 gt has a 105 watt TDP, so I think the 7770 should work. Given you're running an interesting card like the 7950gx2 on your board, that gives me some hope.

I think your best bet is to save your money for a bigger upgrade. A CPU refresh would come with a new motherboard and RAM, which would be a capacity and speed upgrade. On top of that, someone else said your PSU might be close, which might throw a GPU upgrade out of your budget.

At the same time, however, a CPU/motherboard upgrade might also need a new Windows lisence (unless you have retail), which would cost a lot, too.

But I still think that's the best way to go. If you want to play BF3 AND future games you're probably going to need the big upgrade anyway, so focus on that part first. The 8800 will move over on builds without too much trouble, so if you needed to wait on a GPU, something cheaper and less power hungry might be available for your needs when you do replace it.

Good luck!

"A life is like a garden. Perfect moments can be had, but not preserved, except in memory. LLAP"

The brownout sounds like it damaged the motherboard, PSU or one of the drives in some way. There is no way a 450W Corsair PSU should be struggling to power that system. I wouldn't worry about compatibility with a PCI-E 2.0 or 3.0 card. Unless you're using SLI or Crossfire, you don't need much PCI-E bandwidth and PCI-E spec means that everything is backwards compatible.

I would advise not upgrading CPU/RAM/Motherboard until you can afford an i5 or at least a 6-core AMD FX-series chip. Games are starting to push past the limits of console hardware and we're seeing games like Rage, BF3, and some RTS titles really use multithreading well.

If you intend to upgrade CPU/RAM/Motherboard in the next 12 months, then I'd suggest you splash out on an HD7850 or 7870 - these cards will realise their full potential once you have a better base system. They'll both handle all modern games fluidly on high-details at 1080p resolution with enough CPU to back them up. If you intend to use a larger screen, you should probably look at a GTX670 or the GTX660Ti when it's released.

If, however, you just want a stopgap to upgrade from your 8800GT, I'd stick to something cheaper because the CPU will be holding games back far more than the graphics card. See if you can find a GTX460 or GTX560(non-Ti) on sale somewhere. An HD6850 would be equally good if you can get one cheap.

Some people ask me why I have always enclosed my signature in spoiler tags; There is a good reason for that, but I can't elaborate without giving away the plot twist.

1) It's time for a system upgrade. Dropping in a new GPU will get you some performance increase, but the full potential will never be realized until you get a better CPU. See here for example. A Sandy Bridge Pentium G630 is a great place to start if you're strapped for cash at the moment. And/or as Chrispy said, your end-goal would be to upgrade to an i5 when you've got enough money.

2) CPU upgrades are very simple, although I was also nervous before doing my first changeout also. Nothing to be afraid of. You can google a guide for your specific socket, otherwise any new processor comes with an instruction manual. I just don't think it's worth dropping more money into ancient hardware. Save for a new system.

3) I would say a 7770 would fit your needs pretty well unless you want to wait a couple months and see where the GTX 650Ti falls. The 7770 performance is more-or-less on par with a 6850 while consuming less power. They cost roughly the same so get the newer card.

OP is still using the s939 on that Asrock board. It isn't available now, but Asrock offered a riser card and special CPU upgrade slot that allowed you to use an AM2 CPU and DDR2 RAM on the same daughter card. That's the setup I am using for my Asrock rig which was used as a workbench rig (since retired but pressed into service here and there).

The 939 CPUs are bringing a good bit of money on Ebay, so its more involved than you want to get into, but you could sell your current chip there to recoup some $$.

If you could find an AM2 riser card (HUGE if, as these are rare as hen's teeth now) and pair that with an AMD X2 5000+ Black Edition chip you would at least have more CPU to play, but I'd be leaning towards a cheap i3/mATX build at this point. I'm with DPete on this one .. he supplied some links to just what you need if you can scrape up the $$.

Walkintarget wrote:OP is still using the s939 on that Asrock board. It isn't available now, but Asrock offered a riser card and special CPU upgrade slot that allowed you to use an AM2 CPU and DDR2 RAM on the same daughter card. That's the setup I am using for my Asrock rig which was used as a workbench rig (since retired but pressed into service here and there).

The 939 CPUs are bringing a good bit of money on Ebay, so its more involved than you want to get into, but you could sell your current chip there to recoup some $$.

If you could find an AM2 riser card (HUGE if, as these are rare as hen's teeth now) and pair that with an AMD X2 5000+ Black Edition chip you would at least have more CPU to play, but I'd be leaning towards a cheap i3/mATX build at this point. I'm with DPete on this one .. he supplied some links to just what you need if you can scrape up the $$.

I found AMD X2 5000's on Ebay for $32, but they are not Black Edition chips, which would allow you to keep RAM and PCIe in spec and just up your multiplier to achieve 3+ghz speeds.

Thanks for the link to the riser card, I've been looking for one of those for a while. The 5000+ looks like a good fit, too. Of course, I could get the FX57 for the price of the riser and 5000+, but then I wouldn't have faster RAM to work with. And by the time you're thinking of new RAM for the riser, it makes you think about getting a new mainboard entirely. Decisions, Decisions Thanks.

DPete27 wrote:1) It's time for a system upgrade. Dropping in a new GPU will get you some performance increase, but the full potential will never be realized until you get a better CPU. See here for example. A Sandy Bridge Pentium G630 is a great place to start if you're strapped for cash at the moment. And/or as Chrispy said, your end-goal would be to upgrade to an i5 when you've got enough money.

2) CPU upgrades are very simple, although I was also nervous before doing my first changeout also. Nothing to be afraid of. You can google a guide for your specific socket, otherwise any new processor comes with an instruction manual. I just don't think it's worth dropping more money into ancient hardware. Save for a new system.

3) I would say a 7770 would fit your needs pretty well unless you want to wait a couple months and see where the GTX 650Ti falls. The 7770 performance is more-or-less on par with a 6850 while consuming less power. They cost roughly the same so get the newer card.

Thanks. I think I might wait for the fall anyways, since I'm not doing as much gaming in the summer, and waiting for the 650/650 ti might be a good idea, as not only might it be a good lower power fit, it also may drive down the price of a 7770 further.

l33t-g4m3r wrote:His cpu isn't that outdated and should give acceptable performance, provided it's overclocked. There isn't any reason to not upgrade the video card first either, since this isn't an old AGP board that you can't use the card once you upgrade the board. I don't see any downside to upgrading the card at all. The biggest problem here is that the cards listed are possibly too slow even for a fast cpu. The PCI-E slot shouldn't be a problem. I'd recommend a 7850 or 570 for BF3. You can get some of nvidia's older dx11 cards at a decent price if memory isn't an issue.

Gotta disagree. That single-core cpu will be absolutely crippling on any game from the last 2 years. Maybe even three. Your GPU is actually a better performer than your cpu at this point. $200 for a Z67 mobo and a Core i3, while not a flashy upgrade, would be greatly beneficial. Core i5 if you can swing the money.

OP has a X2. I don't see how people are saying this CPU is slow, as benchmarks prove it to be capable of playing games, although there might be a few it can't handle. The 939 is a dual channel board, and the 3800+ is a dual core CPU that is very overclock friendly, even on the stock cooler. Sure it's an older CPU, but it isn't necessary to upgrade it before your video card, if that's what you were originally looking to do. Replacing the video card is an easy upgrade and can be carried over to your new system when you choose to do so. Upgrading the CPU with the riser would be pretty pointless, because if memory serves the newer dual cpus with ddr2 performed pretty similar per clock. There also are 939x2's with 1mb cache and they do help, but I'd pass unless you see a good deal. No clue if a phenom would work. (No.) You'd get more out of overclocking, which if it is possible on your board may net you an extra 400-500 Mhz, which is a decent performance boost. That should hold you over until you decide on a new system.

If you want to go with an AMD FX processor, it would be wise to get an AM3+ motherboard. I don't see any AM3+ boards at memoryexpress that support IDE hard drives. newegg has a few but you're probably better off ditching the 6+ year old (?) IDE hard drives. Sorry for continuing the bad news. Again, this is a suggestion, not a requirement.

l33t-g4m3r wrote:OP has a X2. I don't see how people are saying this CPU is slow

I am drinking beer, listening to music and eating pizza on the very same HTPC that was once powered by the 3800+

It started to really struggle with games about five years ago, but so many games started to run like crap that I bought a new S775 board for an E8400 I had lying around. The E8400 was a HUGE improvement, but even then I noticed the difference by moving to a Q9550 because modern games really do use more cores.

I will concede that the X2 was a decent chip back in the day but Conroe completely outclassed it over six years ago.

Some people ask me why I have always enclosed my signature in spoiler tags; There is a good reason for that, but I can't elaborate without giving away the plot twist.

Well, I might have to add a disclaimer to my statement, which is that it isn't that slow when you overclock it, and granted there was a single core 3800+ but most people who built their PC back then should have picked a dual, especially with a 939 board. I still use my 939 opteron rig as a spare computer, and it runs fast enough to play most games over lan, hence why I think it's good enough. But hey I'm running it overclocked with ddr 500, so it's not exactly the same as a 3800 X2 @ stock.

Yeah, a heavily-overclocked X2 might just about cope but I wouldn't be surprised if OP actually has the single-core. I'm sure he'll confirm one way or the other soon enough.

I jumped on a 939 board at launch and I seem to remeber the X2 not being released for at least a whole year Maybe it was even longer since I bought my first A64 when I moved to London in March '04 and I'm pretty sure I couldn't get my hands on an X2 until the autumn of the following year.

Thinking about it, if the OP is still running an original A64 3800+ then a CPU upgrade is waaaaaay at the top of the priorities list. Even the same old 8800GT will feel quicker with a modern processor to feed it.

Some people ask me why I have always enclosed my signature in spoiler tags; There is a good reason for that, but I can't elaborate without giving away the plot twist.

Chrispy_ wrote:Yeah, a heavily-overclocked X2 might just about cope but I wouldn't be surprised if OP actually has the single-core. I'm sure he'll confirm one way or the other soon enough.

I jumped on a 939 board at launch and I seem to remeber the X2 not being released for at least a whole year Maybe it was even longer since I bought my first A64 when I moved to London in March '04 and I'm pretty sure I couldn't get my hands on an X2 until the autumn of the following year.

Thinking about it, if the OP is still running an original A64 3800+ then a CPU upgrade is waaaaaay at the top of the priorities list. Even the same old 8800GT will feel quicker with a modern processor to feed it.

I've got a dual core 3800+ X2. I may just save my money for a full board/cpu/memory upgrade at this point; the 8800 gt handles things like Skyrim and Call of duty Modern Warfare 3 fine, and I think it can draw everything in Battlefield fine; I think the CPU is just unable to cope with everything that is going on in that game. For the longest time, all the character models in the game would dissappear intermittnatly, with a much higher frequency in high multiplayer matches. A recent patch at least keeps my character visible, but I'm still being shot by unseen enemies. Vehicles work fine. I think my poor old CPU, even dual core, just has too much to handle in Battlefield 3.

I've tried overclocking, but this board isn't very overclocking friendly. The highest I can get the cpu is to 2.3 ghz; after that I even have trouble posting, and was barely able to back down. I'm limited to a voltage of 1.4 ; apparently you can modify the board to handle higher voltages, but that requires some soldering that is beyond my ability.

I may still roll the dice on the 7770, as Memory Express has a pretty good return policy if it doesn't help, and I could pull that to another system later. When I get around to making a change, I'll post back.

Ustauk wrote:I think the CPU is just unable to cope with everything that is going on in that game. For the longest time, all the character models in the game would dissappear intermittnatly, with a much higher frequency in high multiplayer matches. A recent patch at least keeps my character visible, but I'm still being shot by unseen enemies. Vehicles work fine. I think my poor old CPU, even dual core, just has too much to handle in Battlefield 3.

Sounds like a video card problem or game bug more than CPU, probably running out of memory.

Ustauk wrote:I've tried overclocking, but this board isn't very overclocking friendly. The highest I can get the cpu is to 2.3 ghz; after that I even have trouble posting, and was barely able to back down. I'm limited to a voltage of 1.4 ; apparently you can modify the board to handle higher voltages, but that requires some soldering that is beyond my ability.

2.3 Is somewhat acceptable for that board I suppose. There are tweaks you can do with the multipliers/bus to help stabilize, like lower the HT to 3x. I believe there may be some software tools you can use to overclock, like Central brain identifier, CPUMSR, CrystalCPUID, or RMclock. Can't hurt to check them out anyway, and read some OC guides or reviews.

Ustauk wrote:I may still roll the dice on the 7770, as Memory Express has a pretty good return policy if it doesn't help, and I could pull that to another system later. When I get around to making a change, I'll post back.Thanks again for the advice, everyone.

I seriously can't recommend that card, especially for BF3, being it's below mid-grade. That card has a 128 bit bus. The 6850 is slightly faster, and so would a 460, 560 better yet. Read some reviews before buying anything.http://techreport.com/articles.x/22473/5

I have a 6850 that I can try to install on my 939 system later. I'll let you know how it performs, but I don't play BF3.

l33t-g4m3r wrote:I seriously can't recommend that card, especially for BF3, being it's below mid-grade. That card has a 128 bit bus. The 6850 is slightly faster, and so would a 460, 560 better yet

You're really splitting hairs here. AVERAGE frame rates are only 3 fps difference between the two. However, the 7770 showed better performance in the 99th percentile frame times than the 6850 in all games except Skyrim meaning less microstuttering in general. You can get a 7770 that runs at 1.1GHz (similar to the XFX 7770 in the article, and keep in mind the 7770's overclock well) for around $130 on newegg which is only about $5-10 more than the vanilla 1GHz cards. Meanwhile, the cheapest 6850 on newegg costs the same. Keep your eyes on newegg's open box section and you can probably find a better price on either. That's how I got my 6850 for $115 after MIR a year ago. Unless you can find a used 6850 for cheaper, the lower TDP of the 7770 outweighs the miniscule performance delta. Memory bus width isn't everything, there's a reason they come up with new architectures.

Ustauk wrote:I think the CPU is just unable to cope with everything that is going on in that game. For the longest time, all the character models in the game would dissappear intermittnatly, with a much higher frequency in high multiplayer matches. A recent patch at least keeps my character visible, but I'm still being shot by unseen enemies. Vehicles work fine. I think my poor old CPU, even dual core, just has too much to handle in Battlefield 3.

Sounds like a video card problem or game bug more than CPU, probably running out of memory.

This is definitely some kind of a bug with Battlefield; last time I checked no one had figured out what was causing it, but it seemed to affect random people and configurations. Do a search for "Gun Missing, out of body experience" on the Battlefield Get Satisfaction tech support forum for a rather long thread. My 8800 GT only has 512 mb of memory; I've read of other users with more graphics memory having this issue, but I'm thinking of rolling the dice on more graphics memory and GPU speed to see it will help; the game runs at an acceptable frame rate for me otherwise; when I can see my opponents its quite fun. Its just frustrating like hell to be shot by someone I can't even see Thanks again for the advice.

l33t-g4m3r wrote:His cpu isn't that outdated and should give acceptable performance, provided it's overclocked. There isn't any reason to not upgrade the video card first either, since this isn't an old AGP board that you can't use the card once you upgrade the board. I don't see any downside to upgrading the card at all. The biggest problem here is that the cards listed are possibly too slow even for a fast cpu. The PCI-E slot shouldn't be a problem. I'd recommend a 7850 or 570 for BF3. You can get some of nvidia's older dx11 cards at a decent price if memory isn't an issue.

Gotta disagree. That single-core cpu will be absolutely crippling on any game from the last 2 years. Maybe even three. Your GPU is actually a better performer than your cpu at this point. $200 for a Z67 mobo and a Core i3, while not a flashy upgrade, would be greatly beneficial. Core i5 if you can swing the money.

OP has a X2. I don't see how people are saying this CPU is slow, as benchmarks prove it to be capable of playing games, although there might be a few it can't handle. The 939 is a dual channel board, and the 3800+ is a dual core CPU that is very overclock friendly, even on the stock cooler. Sure it's an older CPU, but it isn't necessary to upgrade it before your video card, if that's what you were originally looking to do. Replacing the video card is an easy upgrade and can be carried over to your new system when you choose to do so. Upgrading the CPU with the riser would be pretty pointless, because if memory serves the newer dual cpus with ddr2 performed pretty similar per clock. There also are 939x2's with 1mb cache and they do help, but I'd pass unless you see a good deal. No clue if a phenom would work. (No.) You'd get more out of overclocking, which if it is possible on your board may net you an extra 400-500 Mhz, which is a decent performance boost. That should hold you over until you decide on a new system.

Even on 1440 x 900, a more 'cpu limited' resolution, my E7200 @ 3.4 Ghz could not run TF2 smoothly on high. With a 7870. Civ 5, nope. Any game newer than that? Good luck.

Don't try and dress up old crap, save your money and build a system around a i3-2120. For ~$250 you can get an i3, H77, and 8gbs of ram.